YMMV / 1942

• Awesome Music:
  • Of note especially is 1944's hard rock soundtrack.
  • Any song from 1943. Really, pick any one. The first level theme alone was so awesome, they brought it back for Joint Strike.
• First Installment Wins: No one seems to have heard of 19XX or 1944. It doesn't help that it took until 2021 for both of them to receive their first port.
• Moment of Awesome: The ending of 1942 features the entire Imperial Japanese Navy declaring "WE GIVE UP!" after trying to take down a lone P-38 fighter and failing.
• Narm Charm: The ending of 1942. For many people, a simple "WE GIVE UP!" message is the epitome of A Winner Is You after going through 32 gruelling stages. But at the same time, it's more than just a simple "you won" — it can be seen as a message not only from the in-game IJN, but also the developers, who are shocked that someone could actually beat their unusually-long arcade-difficulty game. They're out of challenges to offer you, so they just award you 10 million points (way more than the points you got up to the end) to get you to stop.
• Offending the Creator's Own: Three of the games (1942, 1943 and 1944) recreate the Americans' attacks on the Japanese in World War II. The NES/Famicom port of 1943 in particular had to have the battleships renamed to avoid potential controversy.
• Porting Disaster: The NES port of 1942 has a very poor frame rate and an even more annoying rendition of the March of Midway. This was due to Capcom outsourcing the port to a small company called Micronics, who also did their Ghosts 'n Goblins NES port. Capcom would learn their lesson for the NES port of 1943 which, while not meant to be an Arcade-Perfect Port, is agreed by many players to be a much better port.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: 1941: Counter Attack is considerably easier to complete than 1943, featuring only 6 stages compared to the latter's 16, Power-Ups that last much longer (each pickup adds 60 seconds to the weapon timer), no drain-over-time effect to the Life Meter, a health refill at the end of each stage, life bar extensions to go with some of these end-of-stage refills, and a full health refill at least once a stage.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: In terms of NES ports, 1943 is a huge improvement over the outsourced 1942, featuring mostly-consistent 60 FPS, a Point Build System for ship customization, and arrangements of the arcade tracks that are just as good. It's not an Arcade-Perfect Port, nor does it support 2 players, but it's a great improvement in its own right.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: 1944's soundtrack is very much inspired by Guns N' Roses and Jimi Hendrix, even if they didn't exist until a few decades after the 1940s.

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